10% Click Through Rate – Is This Possible?

[Lynn Sechrest]

We’ve been trying out Google’s adwords for our small “service” based business in the hope of generating some traffic to our site. We’ve tried different wording and key word combinations for the ad but have had little success. Our biggest day was 2 click thru’s and our best ad had a 0.1% click through rate.

In our research of SEM, we participated in Yahoo’s webinar “Getting started with search engine marketing” and they mentioned, as an example, 7 click thru’s a day and/or a potential 10% click through rate. Obviously this sounds way better than what we’re getting. Also, my research has included this Forum and I wanted to say, thank you, for the insights on "keep trying till you find something that works" and/or "it might not be right for your business but give it a chance".

We’re now wondering what is doable for a small “service” based company when it comes to a SEM click thru rate? What kind of target should we set? Right now, every click thru we get is great but we’d really like to set a reasonable goal.

[David Wallace]

10% or more is possible but rare. We regularly obtain it for a client that is in a niche industry. Most often though a 1.5% - 3% is more the norm, at least from my experience.

[WhereAreMyBiz]

you have to bid on more high traffic keywords i suppose then write your ads
title, description and url contain the keyword that you are bidding for better performance...

[onlinebillb]

10% is definitely way higher than I've ever seen. The norm is like 1-3% click thru, which is good if you're targeting big keywords, because that means more exposure.

[Schmoozii]

10% sounds impossible to me. I think a good ad will get around 2%

[torka]

Difficult, but not impossible.

Try MarketingExperiments.com for real-world testing of all sorts of scenarios, including quite a few related to pay-per-click advertising, both ads and landing pages. They write up each test in a detailed report with examples, all of which are available for free on their website. It can be most enlightening. Highly recommended.

--Torka

[Logan]

I agree, far from impossible.

I think there are two major factors. The more specific the niche/keyword, the higher click through. The closer the ad corresponds with what they searched, the higher the ctr. For example, monitor the actual keyword referrals you receive. Then write ads for each of those keywords including the exact search phrase in the ad and an offer that beats the competition. I often review other ads for that same keyword to improve my own ads/ctr.

High ctr is only good if it also provides conversions.

[uyytuyt]

10% or more is possible but rare, that occured on some web site with useful infomation or softwares.

[ReviveEnergyMin]

I am just learning PPC, but this seems very high. I only wish my conversion rates were there!

[PowerFullWork]

For some marketers that want to achieve 3%-5% CTR a lot of
factors will have to be considered.

In my experience we have found that our landing pages and
optimizing them for our keywords (which is no more than 50)
gave us an combine CTR of 8.71%. Very good but we through
up a crap ad and let it ride.

Goggle is a lot more concern of the landing pages than the ad,
even though the ad is of importance too. Look at your landing
page and think like an customer. Do these landing page(s) provide
the need for which the customer came based on the keyword that
was typed in?

The most important thing would be landing pages (you should have
more than one) keywords (long tail "buying" keywords) and relevancy
of your pages.

On your page do you have an "about us" or "contact us"? Are you
offering value first, before the sale. These are all important factors.